COURSE DESCRIPTION

Focus is on the development of the intellectual and psychomotor skills needed to diagnosis common physical and emotional health problems using a life span approach.

Course Overview:

Physical Diagnosis builds on the assessment skills learned in an undergraduate level health assessment course.  The course is designed to help the students develop and apply their knowledge through the acquisition of skills, that may be used in both primary and acute care settings.   This course will acquaint the student with common health problems including emotional illnesses, that are most frequently encountered in health care settings.   Emphasis is placed on recognition of signs and symptoms associated with common health problems, psychosocial and cultural variations, differentiation between normal and pathological findings, critical thinking necessary for clinical diagnostic reasoning and risk assessment.

Course content and clinical experiences provide learning opportunities in the following conceptual areas:   communication, history taking, system specific symptoms including emotional illness, physical assessment, age related anatomical-physiological changes, pathology, laboratory skills, EKG, X-ray interpretation and recording in the problem-oriented format.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

At the conclusion of this course, the student will:

1. Demonstrate sound critical thinking and diagnostic reasoning

2. Develop a comprehensive data base, including complete functional, developmental and  risk assessment, a symptom specific health history and appropriate diagnostic testing on all age groups

3. Perform a complete physical examination on all age groups, identifying any abnormal findings

4. Analyze the findings from the assessment to differentiate abnormal pathology and  develop differential diagnosis